Fragmented Habitat

Imagine if the roads we travel on each day were suddenly engulfed in a huge crack in the earth that we had no means of navigating lest we fall to our death trying.

When travelling on any road in our vast land we are constantly reminded of the consequence that land manipulation such as roads and highways have on our wildlife as we witness the endless stream of ‘road kill’.

This along with urban development results in a landscape that is increasingly fragmented.

Habitat fragmentation occurs when the land that was once connected becomes spatially separated. While this type of fragmentation can be due to natural causes such as bushfire, it is increasingly due to manmade structures and manipulations to the environment. It becomes a problem for individual animals as they may be hit by cars or get trapped in an urban area without a food source. It can also have negative consequences for biodiversity more broadly. If animals cannot travel and plants cannot spread, biodiversity within an area can decrease. Further, diversity within a single species can also decrease if animals cannot seek out mates in other groups, which leads to an increase in inbreeding.

This work is a response to the concerns of habitat fragmentation and the increasing impacts which threaten entire populations of local wildlife.